Danny Dearest
by Indigo2831
Summary: Tag to 3x01. Steve leaves Danny and Doris in the safe house alone. It doesn't end well.


Aloha! The second season is upon us! I could take or leave some parts, but it's still enjoyable. I know I haven't written in awhile but I really wanted to write something about Danny and Doris, because I hated the way she interrogated him in the car. This is what I came out with. Please let me know what you think.

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**Danny Dearest**

Danny Williams rarely encountered a situation that a little sarcasm couldn't fix.

Until he somehow found himself in a room with Steve McGarrett and his thought-to-be-dead mother, Doris.

The tension was so palpably toxic that Danny felt a little like he was choking on it. He leaned against the wall of the safe house and loosened his tie. If this revelation that Doris was alive was making him feel lightheaded and had rendered him speechless, he couldn't imagine what it was doing to Steve. A casual glance at his partner, standing straight-backed along the opposite wall, shifting his weight from foot-to-foot and drumming his fingers against his elbow confirmed just how uneasy Steve was. What little agitation he actually let show belied the cavern of turmoil and guilt he was actually feeling. Danny's discerning squint turned into a full-fledged frown when Steve grimaced, uncrossing his arms to put them on his hips.

Doris sat on the couch, flipping through a magazine. He rolled his eyes. Some mother.

"You're only human," he said loudly, destroying the world's most awkward silence. "Take a breather so you can process everything, all right?"

Steve cut those bright blue eyes at Danny warning him to zip it. Danny just lifted his eyebrows. "I can read your face like the eye chart at Lenscrafters, man."

Danny headed over to the utilitarian end table of the HPD safe house—a property he knew better than his own apartment—and retrieved the first aid kit from the drawer. Digging into it, he cracked open the cold pack and headed to the small kitchenette. He pulled back a chair and gestured to Steve. "Sit your ass down."

Steve glared at Danny merely crossed his arms and waited until he acquiesced. After two years of partnership, even the SEAL knew that there were some battles he couldn't win. Danny lifted his shirt, trying not to wince at the four puckered bruises from the shots he'd taken doing their best imitation of a Hawaiian sunset. "Vests might stop bullets man, but they're not magic armor from Hogwarts. You need to take it easy for more than two minutes. And no, Steven, sixteen plane rides from Japan and back don't count."

"Danny…"

"Don't Danny me, you haven't even been to the doctor for this yet. I'm not tearin' you a new one because the friggin' sky is falling, so unless you want me to dig deeper than I ever have before, make a withdrawal from my rage bank, and riff about all the crap I've been through since I met you, you'll sit still do what I tell you."

Steve sighed when Danny pressed the cold pack to the worst of the bruises and leaned forward, letting him hold the cold pack to his back and he even cracked another one and handed it back toward him. "You don't even have to get me a Christmas present, the fact that you're not busting my balls right now is more than enough."

"Well I should probably cancel the order for the corner shot I got you, too, huh? Why don't you take these out to the lanai and get some sun? I can handle things here while you take a breather. I know the sunlight keeps you from morphing into a grenade launching cyborg of justice."

Steve surprised even Danny by standing up and shuffling out of the door, icepacks in hand. "I'll be back in a 10. Danno," he said gravely as he lingered by the door, "there's been enough loss today."

Danny's eyes immediately filled. "I know, Steve."

With that, Steve disappeared through the door and let it bang shut behind him.

Danny watched him go, clenching his jaw so he wouldn't think about Chin still standing in the morgue with the body of his beautiful wife. He unholstered his gun just to feel the cold steel in his hands, and feel like a capable cop again, and not like the world was crumbling beneath his feet only to be rebuilt into an existence he didn't recognize or like. A place with conspiracies and newlyweds who'd never see their first anniversary, let alone their first child.

"He didn't tell me he was hurt." Doris said quietly, tossing the magazine down on the coffee table with a dejected sigh.

"That kid could get bitten by a shark and he wouldn't mention it. He's good at keeping secrets. First thing he learned in SEAL school, I'm sure."

"You two are more than just partners," she said strongly.

Danny turned to face her, fighting the sneer of disgust that pulled at his features every time he looked at her or comprehended the magnitude of what'd she'd done. "What makes you say that?"

"You talk to him like a parent, not a colleague."

He glanced up briefly and let the anger answer for him. "Yeah, well someone has to."

Doris bit her lip and stood up quickly, clearly wounded by the dig. Danny tried not to feel too proud of himself.

"He's a great man. I think he fared pretty well on his own...despite everything that happened."

He couldn't button in the scoff that leapt from his lips. "Lady, if that's what you think, you're the worst spy in the history of spydom. And shut up, it's a word."

She seemed enticed by his naked contempt. "You don't like me do you?"

Danny shoved his gun back in his holster and opted to stroll around the living room. The safe house was homey—all of the secure measures hidden by soft-colored curtains and seashell lamps—but it didn't resonate like a home. It was missing knick-knacks and tsotchkes and all of those things his mother spent her entire life accumulating at garage sales and Things Remembered stores.

"I asked you a question."

"And I ignored it. Lady, you don't want to know what I think."

"Or you just don't have the balls to say it," Doris challenged.

Danny's mouth snapped open and he nearly leapt off the cliff and gave Doris the reality check her smug, too-tall self needed, but he caught himself, huffing a laugh as his shoulders dropped and his body uncoiled. He went to dig through Steve's go bag to keep his hands busy. "I'm not letting you bait me. You friggin' spies are all the same. You can't press my buttons."

She advanced towards him until she was inches away, the ire flickers in her eyes. And Danny would be damned if she didn't look just like Steve. "Give me a break, I've overridden bigger men than you without even breaking a sweat. So if you have something to say, _Danno,_ then just say it. I'm not some trembling debutante and it's better than having it hanging in the air."

The rage snapped within him lightning fast and he slammed the back on the table with a crack that made the spy extradordinaire flinch. "I'm just trying to figure out what kind of parent would just bail on their kid. Not just that but go through the sick and twisted lengths to make them think they were dead. I would crawl through fire for my daughter. Hell, I moved across the globe just to see her every other weekend and one night a week. Knowing Steve and how incredibly screwed up he is, that's what I'm gnawing on right now."

"How dare you question the choices I've made," she seethed with maternal, self-righteous rage. "You have no idea what I've been through or how much it gutted me to leave my children. But Steve grew up stronger for it. He's an accomplished, decorated soldier…he's…"

Danny pulled his hand out of the bag and waved the contents in front of Doris, whose face plummeted. "A man who doesn't leave the house without grenades and gets a little explosive-happy when his life blows up in his face...a man who was so palpably lonely and wrecked after his father's murder, and his mother's car-accident-turned-murder and his sister's absence that he clung to me-some _haole_ stranger from New Jersey-like a barnacle. A man who has been manipulated, shot, kidnapped and _tortured_ because he has this pathological need to know why his parents left him and why his life was blown apart at 16 years old," Danny listed not at all deterred by Doris flinching when he mentioned Steve's stint in North Korea. "So yeah, I treat him like my kid brother or a really giant, ninja son, but that's because when I met him, that's the only thing he responded to. It's the only thing that makes him not feel like an orphan. So you can justify your actions all you want and rationalize that you didn't give him fodder for a lifetime of therapy, but you're only fooling yourself, _Mom_."

Doris swiped a tear from her cheek and put her hands on her hips. "You have a daughter, right?" She asked softly. "And you'd do anything for her...crawl through fire, I think you said."

"Fire, lava, some kind of nuclear waste, pick your poison."

"Ya know, when you're a spy your life become really small. It's hotel rooms and debriefings and training in gray cinder block rooms. When I met Steve's father, it was like the whole world opened up to me, like my life became larger than it ever had been before. It was dinners and barbecues and football games and weddings and births and milestones. But then some very real danger found its way back to me, and I had to leave all of that behind and go back to that small little existence and those wretched gray rooms. So, Mr. Father Of The Year, could you do that for your daughter?"

Danny thought about it for a moment and smiled without humor. "No, Doris, I couldn't. I guess I'm not as strong as you are. Or maybe I just know the outcome."

A plinking of floorboards and an odd rustle of wind interrupted their tense stare-down and efficiently hacked through the brutal tension that had settled in the room. Danny pushed Doris down on the floor beside the small kitchenette, his gun at the ready a second later. Steve headed into the room barely flinching at the sight of the weapon. He grinned, mushy icepacks in his hand. "Just testin' your reflexes, _brah_. SWATs here."

"Awesome," Danny breathed, holstering his weapon. He turned and offered Doris a saccharine smile. "Doris, it's been a pleasure. Listen to SWAT and enjoy your tiny room. Steven, I'll be in the car. And don't throw those ice packs away, you can ice while I drive."

Steve rolled his eyes, watching as Danny exited the house. He moved to follow him into the sunlight. "Um, we'll be back later. We're going to try to hunt down Wo Fat, there's a good chance he's still on the island…so…uh…what, Doris?"

"You never mentioned you were hurt, Steve. Is it bad?"

He scoffed, waving away her concern with an icepack-filled hand. "It's fine. Danny's just…he likes to treat me like the son he doesn't have…or the little brother he lost. I let him because it makes him feel better."

Doris' shoulders shook with laughter as she tucked her hands in her pockets, mirroring her son without even realizing it. "You might want to keep him around. He's one of the good ones, Steven."

Steve glanced at Danny hovering over the hood of the Camaro, inspecting it for scratches. "Yeah, Doris, he is."


End file.
